Associate Principal AI Engineer

Location: Barcelona - Spain (3 days working from the office and 2 days working from home)

At AstraZeneca, we put patients first and tackle unmet medical needs worldwide. You will join a collaborative, fast‑moving environment where bold ideas become real impact. We value individualized flexibility and balance. Our teams spend three days a week together in our offices designed for collaboration, innovation, and delivery.

Help shape the future of AI in Biopharmaceutical Development and accelerate how we bring biologic medicines to patients. We are seeking an Associate Principal AI Engineer to lead the design and delivery of GenAI and agentic AI solutions that transform knowledge management, authoring submissions/reporting, and resource optimization across BPD.

What will you do?

• Architect and deliver advanced GenAI and agentic AI capabilities for knowledge retrieval, workflow automation, scientific documentation, and decision support.

• Lead key product areas including the Ada BPD AI Assistant (multimodal query handling, knowledge‑graph integration), SARA submission/reporting automation, AI‑augmented resource management, and our ML & AI foundational platform.

• Operationalize AI/ML excellence: evaluate open/closed model families, apply fine‑tuning/PEFT, implement safety guardrails and hallucination controls, and establish grounded reasoning and rigorous evaluation frameworks.

• Optimize inference for latency, scalability, and cost; deploy vector search systems and robust ingestion pipelines with strong privacy, access control, and governance.

• Design and deliver secure, high‑performance front‑end user experiences that seamlessly connect to AI platforms and scientific data, ensuring intuitive, accessible workflows for scientists

• Drive MLOps and productionization: CI/CD for models and apps, monitoring and drift detection, observability dashboards, human‑in‑the‑loop review, safe rollout practices, and compliance with AZ production readiness standards.

• Partner closely with BPD scientists, IT, quality, and security; influence technical decisions with clear, evidence‑based communication.

• Mentor junior engineers, contribute to best practices, and help build a high‑performing AI Engineering community.

Education & Experience Requirements

• Master’s or PhD in Computer Science, Data Science, Mathematics, Engineering, or related field.

• Substantial experience building production AI applications and front‑end interfaces in a regulated enterprise or scientific environment.

• Demonstrated expertise in: LLMs, GenAI, RAG, agentic systems Python (TensorFlow, PyTorch), C#, Docker, Kubernetes, microservices, APIs.

  • React/TypeScript and secure client-side integration.

  • Vector databases, embedding models.

  • CI/CD, model deployment, monitoring, best DevOps and MLOps practices.

  • Excellent communication and presentation skills, with the ability to convey complex technical concepts to non-technical partners.

  • Experience with Agile and Lean practices, delivering in product‑ or platform‑focused teams.

Preferred Experience

• Background in biologics development, CMC, regulatory submissions, scientific documentation workflows, or experience delivering software in regulated environments (e.g., biopharma, healthcare, finance/insurance, actuarial)

• Experience implementing AI safety, guardrails, content filtering, red‑teaming.

• Strong collaboration with UX, product management, and scientific stakeholders.

• Proven experience operating in a global context- collaborating across time zones and functions- to align diverse stakeholders, drive clarity, and deliver outcomes in distributed teams.

How you’ll measure impact

• Accelerated cycle times across submission and reporting workflows, improved documentation quality, and measurable reduction of manual tasks by 30%+.

• High adoption and satisfaction with BPD AI Assistant and related AI tools.

• Robust MLOps foundations and strong auditability, safety, and compliance alignment.

• Demonstrated ability to lead complex, high‑impact AI engineering work streams consistent with AZ standards and expectations.

When we put unexpected teams in the same room, we unleash bold thinking with the power to inspire life-changing medicines. In-person working gives us the platform we need to connect, work at pace and challenge perceptions. That's why we work, on average, a minimum of three days per week from the office. But that doesn't mean we're not flexible. We balance the expectation of being in the office while respecting individual flexibility. Join us in our unique and ambitious world.

Are you ready to make a difference? Apply now and join us in our mission to change lives.

Date Posted

Closing Date

AstraZeneca embraces diversity and equality of opportunity.  We are committed to building an inclusive and diverse team representing all backgrounds, with as wide a range of perspectives as possible, and harnessing industry-leading skills.  We believe that the more inclusive we are, the better our work will be.  We welcome and consider applications to join our team from all qualified candidates, regardless of their characteristics.  We comply with all applicable laws and regulations on non-discrimination in employment (and recruitment), as well as work authorization and employment eligibility verification requirements.